Friday, January 31, 2014

Keeping a sex demon happy and sexually satisfied is always the safest
option, even if Cy has his own relationship issues. When saving the
world on a regular basis, a happy home is important, especially when
mixing human, fae princes and a starving sex demon.

Discuss this book in our PUYB Virtual Book Club at Goodreads by clicking HERE.

As Philadelphia’s premier image consultant, Allison Campbell helps
others reinvent themselves, but her most successful transformation was
her own after a scandal nearly ruined her. Now she moves in a world of
powerful executives, wealthy, eccentric ex-wives and twisted ethics.

When Allison’s latest Main Line client, the fifteen-year-old Goth
daughter of a White House hopeful, is accused of the ritualistic murder
of a local divorce attorney, Allison fights to prove her client’s
innocence when no one else will. But unraveling the truth brings
specters from her own past. And in a place where image is everything,
the ability to distinguish what’s real from the facade may be the only
thing that keeps Allison alive.

Discuss this book in our PUYB Virtual Book Club at Goodreads by clicking HERE.

Narrated by the teenage girl who lived it, Closet Full of Coke
tells the true story of how a New York suburban fifteen-year-old girl’s
savvy and wit helps turn the small-time drug business of Armando, a
Colombian drug dealer, into a multi-million-dollar cocaine operation
that puts them on the DEA’s Wanted List.

This intimate diary gives readers a fast-paced glimpse of the couple’s speedy rise to riches, and their inevitable descent.

These wannabe drug lords of the 1980s New York-to-Florida drug scene
end their story only three years later with an untimely death, betrayal,
and revenge.

Here is a true account of drug dealers whose obsession with money,
power, sex, and glamour drives them to a lifestyle of deceit and
recklessness, ending in tragedies that destroy lives forever.

Discuss this book in our PUYB Virtual Book Club at Goodreads by clicking HERE.

Thursday, January 30, 2014

Ryker Bennett has dedicated his life to hunting down—and
eliminating—creatures of the dark. But his latest assignment has him
questioning everything he’s ever believed in. Jenna Sinclair may be a
witch, but she’s also the only woman Ryker has ever loved.

Jenna thought leaving Ryker two years ago would save him from having
to choose between their forbidden love and his sworn duty. But when he
tracks her down, it’s clear the desire between them burns as hot as
ever—and that they’ll have to walk through the flames to be together…

Discuss this book in our PUYB Virtual Book Club at Goodreads by clicking HERE.

Past Medical History is a compilation of short stories
chronicling the life of Dr. Don Stewart, who grew up with the singular
goal of becoming a physician, then quit the day he earned his medical
license to make a life and a living as an artist. It’s The Devil Wears Prada meets The House of God,
with a character who sees his own career circling the drain, pronounces
it DOA, and turfs himself to an art studio for treatment. It’s Patch Adams, with an attitude; The Things They Carried, dressed up in scrubs and a white lab coat.

This series of stories draws a clear picture of a doctor who
recognized the pitfalls of his chosen profession, discharged himself
from the hospital, then took his life in a more creative, and far
healthier direction.

Discuss this book in our PUYB Virtual Book Club at Goodreads by clicking HERE.

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Kate West and Dr. Holden Reese have put their troubled past behind
them and are ready to set a wedding date. There;s only one thing in
Holden’s way: a powerful drug Lord at Keystone Downs Thoroughbred Race
Track has Holden under his thumb, and he’s not letting go!

Kate’s family is determined to get to the bottom the of horse
drugging ring, and when the West’s get too close to the truth the Drug
Lord sends them a brutal message that can’t be misinterpreted. Now
Holden is on the run, and he’s dragging Kate with him.

Can he escape his indiscretions?

How long can he keep Kate in the dark?

And how damning will the truth be when it’s finally revealed?

Discuss this book in our PUYB Virtual Book Club at Goodreads by clicking HERE.

Monday, January 27, 2014

Ryker Bennett has dedicated his life to hunting down—and
eliminating—creatures of the dark. But his latest assignment has him
questioning everything he’s ever believed in. Jenna Sinclair may be a
witch, but she’s also the only woman Ryker has ever loved.

Jenna thought leaving Ryker two years ago would save him from having
to choose between their forbidden love and his sworn duty. But when he
tracks her down, it’s clear the desire between them burns as hot as
ever—and that they’ll have to walk through the flames to be together…

Discuss this book in our PUYB Virtual Book Club at Goodreads by clicking HERE.

Sunday, January 26, 2014

Georgia Le Carre, author of THE BILLIONAIRE BANKER, is here in the house! We welcome Georgia to the PUYB Virtual Book Club where she will be taking questions about her book on January 27. Leave a question for Georgia and she will bestow you with some really terrific prizes which include:

2 solid silver 1 ounce American Eagle coins from the Barrington family vault

$25.00 Amazon gift card

Signed copy of The Billionaire Banker

Nail glitter courtesy of Billy Black

CONGRATULATIONS TO WENDY OF MINDING SPOT! YOU ARE OUR WINNER!

Sure enough! All you have to do is leave a comment or question for Georgia in the comment section and we'll randomly choose a winner for all these really cool prizes! The Q&A/Giveaway will be held on Monday, January 27 all day long. This contest will end on January 30. We will announce the winner here in the book club on January 31. Good luck!

ABOUT GEORGIA LECARRE

Georgia Le Carre lives in England, in an old 19th
century romantic cottage surrounded by a magical garden filled with
fruit and walnut trees. When she is not feeding words into her laptop,
she is either curled up in bed with a box of chocolates and a good read,
or lost in a long walk in the woods. Especially on moonlit nights. And
often with the man of her dreams.

ABOUT THE BILLIONAIRE BANKER

When Lana Bloom learns the devastating news that her mother is dying,
she is faced with a terrible dilemma. The one thing that can save her
is the one thing she does not have. For young and innocent Lana, the
unthinkable becomes her only choice.
But when she walks through the door of that exclusive restaurant she
has no idea of the seismic shift her life is about to take, for the
highest bidder will not be the rich man she has accompanied. Fate drops
her at the feet of the deeply mysterious and dazzlingly gorgeous
American banker, Blake Law Barrington. Throbbing with raw masculinity
and arrogance, this is a man who owns all that he pursues.
And now he wants her.

Friday, January 24, 2014

Jeremy Kagan is here at the book club today to talk about his new memoir, My Death: A Personal Guidebook!

Jeremy Kagan is an internationally recognized
director/writer/producer of feature films and television and a tenured
professor. Some of his feature credits include the box-office hits HEROES, the political thriller THE BIG FIX, THE CHOSEN (2 time Grand Prize winner),and THE JOURNEY OF NATTY GANN (Gold Prize Moscow Film Festival). Among his many television shows are KATHERINE: the Making of an American Revolutionary and HBO’s CONSPIRACY: THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 8 (ACE Award for Best Dramatic Special). His film ROSWELL,THE UFO CONSPIRACY garnered a Golden Globe nomination and he directed the pilot for the hit series DR. QUINN: MEDICINE WOMAN. Other television films include, for Showtime COLOR OF JUSTICE about racism and BOBBIE’S GIRL about a lesbian couple andCROWNHEIGHTS
about the 1991 riots, which won the Humanitas Award for “affirming the
dignity of every person.” Kagan has won an EMMY for Dramatic Series
Directing and directed “West Wing” and Spielberg’s ”Taken.” He has made
films for The Doe Fund which is the most successful program in America
helping the homeless and for The Bioneers which organizes leaders in
ecology and social justice, and TreePeople.

Professor Kagan teaches
graduate courses at USC in directing and has created the Change Making
Media Lab, which has made projects on cancer prevention, obesity and
ADHD. Kagan has served as the Artistic Director of Robert Redford’s
Sundance Institute and is on the National Board of the Directors Guild
and Chairperson of its Special Projects. His books DIRECTORS CLOSE UP,
Vol. 1 & 2, are published by Scarecrow Press. A Graduate Fellow of
the American Film Institute, he has an M.F.A. from NYU and a B.A. from
Harvard University. He has taught master seminars on filmmaking in Hong
Kong, Hamburg, Hanoi, France, Lebanon, Israel, Ireland and India.

Thanks for coming to the book club, Jeremy! I have to admit – your book so intrigued me. Would you like to start off by telling us just what an out of body experience is like?

Jeremy: I expect that OBEs are similar in some ways and different in others depending on the pre-conditioning of the person. What you believe now effects what you will experience. What was true for me is that I knew little about these kind of journeys though some 15 years before I had seen the famous book by Robert Monroe and retained something about silver cords connecting the astral body to the physical body and being able to float from room to room like a kind of ghost. None of this happened to me in my near death experience. My experience was about letting go. Meaning I lost my physical abilities and senses, I couldn’t see or hear or move and I had to accept that and even more accept that I was dying and had to let go of being here, let go of my career, my family and relationships, my ego.

So the moment you left your body, what can you compare that to?

Jeremy: I looked for words to describe the ecstasy as I wrote the book: This final letting go, giving up, had an experience to it. Unexpected. It was like air released from an inflatable pillow. Like water gently overflowing a container. Like a sphere whose surface has somehow dissolved and everything within flows easily out in every direction. And there was no pain. No pain at all. Just this smooth dissolution of being. It was remarkably soothing.

When you have an out of body experience, did you ever feel that you couldn’t ‘go back’?

Jeremy: There was no going back. The idea of return was not even an idea. The issues was where I was going to and what would happen next.

Why did you decide to go to a sweat lodge in the first place?

Jeremy: I had gone to sweats before. As I mention in the book these experiences were intense and challenging. You are in the dark, it is very hot, you sweat a lot, its really uncomfortable, but I had powerful visions doing these sweats and felt cleaned of worries, as in the kind of sweat lodges that I had gone to, you are asked to tell the truth and to speak to wishes you have for yourself, for others and to give away those thoughts and emotions that are possessing you. Powerful stuff. And this was the night before my birthday, so I thought it a good idea for a kind or pre-birthday preparation.

Your book can be called an aid to help people get over their fear of dying. How do you feel it does that?

Jeremy: Well, I have that fear of dying and had that fear of dying. This experience where I died or went through some mystical experience of dying and death allowed me to know that consciousness does not end with the end of the body, and that the transition itself can be blissful, and the experiences out of the body can be ecstatic and perfect. Yes I also went through my version of hell, but that too turned out to be an illusion, and just to know that is to remove much of the fear of any form of afterlife.

Is there anything else you’d like to tell everyone?

Jeremy: This book is about learning to live with death, learning to appreciate the miracle of living, and hopefully it is a preparatory document for the journey that we all are taking. I want the reader to know that awareness does not end with the end of your body. That love for everyone and everything is a possibility. And that we need to "lighten up." Meaning not take things so seriously, opening up our hearts, removing the heaviness that can drag us down, becoming a light for others, being passionate yet not attached, and letting go of the constraints that limit us to being the remarkable beings we truly are.

Friday, January 17, 2014

It's so sad to see our authors go, but in tribute we do a recap of the highlights of their blog tour with us at Pump Up Your Book. Today we're highlighting Jo Kessel and her Weak at the Knees Virtual Book Publicity Tour.About the Author:

Jo Kessel is a journalist in the UK, working for the BBC and
reporting and presenting for ITV

on holiday, consumer and current
affairs programs. She writes for several national newspapers including
the Daily Mail, the Telegraph, the Guardian and the Express and was the
anonymous author of the Independent’s hit column: Diary of a Primary
School Mum.

When Jo was ten years old she wrote a short story about losing a
loved one. Her mother and big sister were so moved by the tale that it
made them cry. Having reduced them to tears she vowed that the next time
she wrote a story it would make them smile instead. Happily she
succeeded and with this success grew an addiction for wanting to reach
out and touch people with words.P.S Jo’s pretty certain one of her daughters has inherited this gene.Other books by Jo Kessel include Lover in Law.

Danni Lewis has been playing it safe for twenty-six years, but her
sheltered existence is making her feel old ahead of time. When a sudden
death plunges her into a spiral of grief, she throws caution to the wind
and runs away to France in search of a new beginning.

The moment ski instructor Olivier du Pape enters her shattered world she falls hard, in more ways than one.

Their mutual desire is as powerful and seductive as the mountains
around them. His dark gypsy looks and piercing blue eyes are
irresistible.

Only she must resist, because he has a wife – and she’d made a pact to never get involved with a married man.

But how do you choose between keeping your word and being true to your soul?

Weak at the Knees is Jo’s debut novel in the new adult, contemporary
romance genre – a story of love and loss set between London and the
heart of the French Alps.

Virtual Book Tour Highlights:

Interview at Blogcritics:

What advice would you give to aspiring writers whose spouses or partners don’t support their dreams of becoming an author?This quote’s on the front cover of Weak at the Knees:
‘We got so busy living life that we forgot to live our dreams’. Dreams
are so important and we all need to follow ours before it’s too late…as
the heroine Danni learns in a tragic way. So I wouldn’t ever let a
spouse or partner squash those dreams of becoming an author. Do it. Give
it a go…because you never know what’s around the corner.READ MORE

Guest Blogging at Laurie's Thoughts and Reviews:

My background is as a television reporter, so I tend to think in pictures.
Whenever I write I often close my eyes to imagine the scene and literally embody
my characters – living and breathing their moment. It’s the writing equivalent
of Stanislavski’s ‘method-acting’ technique. READ MORE

Guest Blogging at Rainy Days and Pajamas:

The scariest thing about being an author is that people will judge me.
This is no different for any creative, be it an artist, an actor, or a
movie director etc. We’re all putting our work out there in the public
domain, hoping that people will enjoy it, but knowing that they will all
have an opinion, be it good or bad. READ MORE

Interviewed at The Book Connection:

When did you begin writing?

I began writing short stories pretty much as soon as I could put pen to
paper, age five. And I’ve just never stopped. I’ve been lucky in that I
was able to turn my passion for writing into a career and work as a
newspaper journalist in the UK. But more recently I found myself longing
to dig deeper and create a full and multi-layered storyline which would
take the characters on a much longer journey than a short story will
allow. That’s when the novel-writing began. My first novel Lover in Law
came out almost a year ago and now I’m celebrating the release of Weak at the Knees.READ MORE Review at Bibliotica:

Weak at the Knees is a fast read, incredibly enjoyable, and far more complex than the cover blurb implies. Read it. You won’t be sorry. READ MORE

Monday, January 13, 2014

Rudy Mazzocchi is here at the book club today to talk about his new business/entrepreneur book, Storytelling: The Indispensable Art of Entrepreneurism!

Rudy Mazzocchi is best known as a medical device and biotechnology
entrepreneur, inventor, and angel investor, with a history of starting
new technology ventures throughout the U.S. and Europe. He’s been
privileged to have the opportunity to see the newest innovations in
healthcare and work with some of the most brilliant researchers,
scientists and physicians in the industry.

Authoring more than 50 patents, he has helped pioneer new companies
involved in cardiology, oncology, orthopedics, neurosurgery and even
embryonic stem-cell development. Through these efforts, he has become
the recipient of many technology and business awards, including the
Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in Healthcare (2004),
Businessman of the Year Award (2005), and Global Entrepreneur of the
Year Award (2013).

Combining these experiences and opportunities, with thousands of
hours of travel and long evenings in hotel rooms, he found the
initiative to start writing a collection of award-winning
business/medical thrillers based on true events, known as The EQUITY
Series. STORYTELLING was his debut non-fiction business book released in November 2013.

Thanks for joining us at the book club today, Rudy! STORYTELLING – The Indispensable Art of Entrepreneurism is quite different from the suspense thrillers I’ve known you to write. How come you came up with a book on entrepreneurism?

Well, the two suspense thrillers are based on true events and real medical sciences that I’ve encountered during my career as an entrepreneur and start-up CEO. Exploring hundreds of new technology developments have provided me with the source of materials for these novels. After receiving three entrepreneur/business awards, I was nominated a second time for the prestigious Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in Healthcare. During the interview process, I sat before the judges who repeatedly attempted to discover the secret of my success. Since I’ve had no formal business/finance education or training, I was hard-pressed to provide an answer. It was really only then did I realize that it was ALL about how one tells the story. Apparently, none of the current business/entrepreneurism programs at the university level have ever focused on this key element. It was those judges who encouraged me to write this book based on my experiences of establishing a dozen technology companies over the past twenty-five years.

Who would benefit the most from this book?

This book will benefit not only the wannabe and experienced serial entrepreneur, but those individuals who are required to engage and motivate an audience – any audience: divisional managers, salespeople, product designers, etc. It’s an essential art that can make the difference between success and failure. (I provide real life examples of both in this book.)

How hard was it to switch over from fiction to nonfiction?

Since my novels walk a fine line between fiction and non-fiction already, this was an easy transition. The biggest difference is that I needed to do a much deeper degree of “fact checking”. I actually sent chapters out to other business associates who were involved in many of these stories in order to get their validation of the facts!

What was your very first startup business and can you tell us what you learned from the experience?

I tell this tale in STORYTELLING… it was when I was a first-time CEO and founder of a medical device company at the age of twenty-eight. I didn’t realize it back then, but the only skill I really had (assuming ambition didn’t count), was my ability to tell the story. I easily became enthralled with the technology and their medical applications to the point of wanting to see as many surgical procedures as I could to further educate myself. The raw human element associated with each event provided me with the necessary “hook” of the story.

What kind of advice can you give to new startup business owners?

First… buy my book… lol. Secondly, do your homework and craft the appropriate story that contains all the necessary components of ANY good story. Think about those stories we all loved to hear during our childhood. They had a great beginning, middle and ending. Pull it together, rehearse it, and then continue to perfect it.

Is there anything else you’d like to tell your readers?

This author greatly appreciates all the tremendous support from readers of both my fiction and non-fiction books. My literary agent is diligently speaking with many movie producers and screenwriters in an attempt to bring The EQUITY Series to the big screen. It’s been a wonderful and rewarding process!

The sole heir of his uncle’s estate, Brack receives a rundown bar
called the Pirate’s Cove, a rotting beach house, and one hundred acres
of preserved and valuable wetland along the Ashley River. A member of
Charleston’s wealthiest and oldest families offers Brack four million
dollars for the land. All Brack wants is his uncle’s killer.

From the sandy beaches of Isle of Palms, through the
nineteenth-century mansions lining the historic Battery, to the
marshlands surrounding the county, Southern Heat is drenched in the
humidity of the lowcountry.

David will be touring March 3 - April 30. We are looking for reviews (ebook only), interviews, guest posts and book spotlights.

We
welcome Elizabeth Woodrum to PUYB Virtual Book
Club! Elizabeth is here to talk about her new book and writing
for the children’s market. Ask her a question in the comment section
and we’ll pick one of you to win free audiobook copy of her delightful
children’s book, Maisy and the Missing Mice. This contest
will begin today and end on January 10 so get your comments
in! Only those leaving an email address (so we can contact you) are
eligible to win. Good luck and thanks for entering!

More about Elizabeth Woodrum:

Elizabeth Woodrum is a full time elementary teacher in Ohio. She
began writing as early as when she was in elementary school, but more
recently began writing material for use in her classroom. From that
writing, grew the desire to write books for the general population of
children and adults alike. The Maisy Files, a children’s series, is the
first series that she has published. The series currently has one book, Maisy and the Missing Mice. Elizabeth plans to add more books to the series, and would also like to publish books for adults in the future.

As a reader, Elizabeth prefers the fantasy genre, but she enjoys
realistic fiction as well. Some of her favorite authors include JK
Rowling, Stephenie Meyer, Rick Riordan, Veronica Roth, Suzanne Collins,
and Nicholas Sparks.

Originally from Indiana, Elizabeth currently resides near Dayton,
Ohio with her two pets: a cat named Butterscotch and a dog named Reese
Cup.

Maisy Sawyer is not your average fourth grade student. She is a
detective with a special skill for solving mysteries. She loves black
and white mystery movies, cherry lollipops, and her dog, Reesie. When a
thief known as The Black Boot steals the school’s mascots and her
lollipops, Maisy sets out to solve the case. Can she help return the
mice to their home in the science lab? Will she ever see her beloved
lollipops again? Find out in the first book in The Maisy Files series.Visit the book trailer at http://videodemo.co/JP2cf9mjLj/.

Thanks
for coming to the book club, Elizabeth! Get comfy, grab
yourself a cup of coffee and let’s get started. My first book was a
children’s book so I feel we have a lot in common. Why did you
decide to write for the children’s market?

Elizabeth:I have been a teacher for over a decade.The majority of that time has been spent
teaching fourth grade language arts.So,
after spending my days working with words and children, I decided that
realizing my dream of being an author would probably be most successful if I
wrote for the children’s market.I know
the age group I’m writing for, so I feel that makes me able to write to their
interests.

Where
are you from and what do you do for a living there? Do you have
family?

Elizabeth:I am originally from Indiana, but I currently
live outside of Dayton, Ohio.As I
mentioned before, I am a teacher, but I work in a rural district in Preble
County, Ohio.My family is located in
Indiana, but I do have my furry family with me in Ohio.My dog Reese Cup, who was the inspiration for
Maisy’s dog, and my cat, Butterscotch, keep me company at home. They are quite
the twosome!

Back
to your book, tell us all about Maisy!

Elizabeth:Maisy is a fourth grade student with a
special skill for solving mysteries.She
enjoys old, black and white mystery movies.So, she pretends to be in a black and white world when solving a case.
She even has an old fashioned hat that she wears when she’s on a case.She also loves cherry lollipops.She has a large collection of them that she
has received as payment whenever she’s solved a case for someone.Maisy almost always has at least one cherry
lollipop with her!

Every
book of fiction has a pivotal point for the reader that they can’t
forget. What do you think is one of the pivotal points in your book?

Elizabeth:I’ve had many students in my school read the
book.Many of them have mentioned that
they were interested in who the thief was more after he steals Maisy’s cherry
lollipop collection.Since Maisy is so
attached to her lollipops, she becomes even more determined to solve the case
at that point.

Is
there anything else you’d like to tell your readers?

Elizabeth:Maisy is an enjoyable and unique
character.I doubt you have come across
someone exactly like her in your reading, even of the mystery genre. Reviews
have mentioned that she was fun to read about and that readers are looking
forward to more stories.I do plan to
have this be a larger series.There are
no set plans yet, but book two is in the process of being written.I hope to have it out sometime in early 2014.

Angela will be touring February 3 - 28. We are looking for reviews (ebook only), interviews, guest posts and book spotlights.

About the Book:

Keeping a sex demon happy and sexually satisfied is always
the safest option, even if Cy has his own relationship issues. When saving the
world on a regular basis, a happy home is important, especially when mixing
human, fae princes and a starving sex demon.

Book Excerpt:

When rotten fish and bile smell of the ambergris met… well,
you know what sulfur smells like, the whole sky lit as fragrantly as it did
brightly. Just like the old days. Evil came in different flavors but it all
smelled badly. I was ready for whatever came out of that cloud. But the only
threat was a different kind of bad smell. My agents replaced three quarters of
the whale vomit with earwax at the source to cut costs. We didn’t know it would
also save the world.

My boyfriend,
Patrick, had insisted the bad guys would now the difference and that I was
risking my life to make the switch, but the person picking up the ambergris
from my agent hadn’t known what it was supposed to look or smell like either. I
wasn’t even supposed to be here. My brilliant planning was supposed to have
helped out my team, not me, personally.

After the sky fizzled
out, the warlock had exploded in a billion, billion...billion? I had no idea. I
wasn't a physicist, I was an apocalypse stopper. Calculating how many photons
contained within whatever warlock the Internet coughed up this week wasn’t in
my job description. No scientist would ever read my paperwork.

I was retired from
active duty. I was only supposed to administrate the real apocalypse stoppers.
I'd been out scouting for possible altar locations when the world-ending had
started early. The exploded warlock had been as surprised as I was until he had
been unmade.

And he took my
company car with him.

When the apocalypse
had started, my first thought had been oh,
good.

Patrick was going to
kill me.

The cow walking along
side me looked as though nature has squared off her body. If cartoon physics
were correct her cross-sections would look like T-bone steaks. The highway I
walked beside stretched on ribbons, rolling over the endless hills in the high
country. The cow had been following me for a while just on the other side of
the barbed wire fence. Three hours of constant adrenaline had left my
fine-reasoning skills somewhat stripped, but I was fairly sure it wasn’t a
threat. It reached the end of the fenced in field and regurgitated some cud.

I wanted breakfast,
too. My back hurt, my shins ached, and the dried mud on the legs of my suit
added twenty pounds to each step. My boss had even forced me to wear dress
shoes to the stupid meet-and-greet that had turned into a scream-and-run.

Another red car
appeared in the distance, but I didn’t get my hopes up. Because the high powers
above loved to mock my life choices, the last three cars that appeared in the
past hour had all been small, two-seaters, and red.

It bobbed up and down
on the ribbons.I had a blister on the
back of my foot. I wanted to stop walking, but that would almost guarantee the
car wasn’t Patrick’s.

On the last rise, the
turn signals came on, and the car started slowing down. Patrick had a meeting
with one of the major charm-makers in town. He’d been worried about it for
weeks, but once the rogue warlock who was sourcing his hanged-man pancreas
through craigslist had run out of his ambergris, the hell-fire had stopped. The
warlock had brought a full truck’s worth of sulfur, but without enough of the
catalyst ambergris, it fizzed out before summoning even a hell-puppy, forget a
hell-beast. Exploding into subatomic particles was an easier death than having
a summoned-but-not-contained denizen of hell munching on parts of you from a
watching-your-own-death happen perspective.

We had a lot of specific terms in our business. We used a
lot of dashes.

Patrick and I had
been together for five years, and yet when I asked him if I had woken him up
just before dawn before his biggest meeting of the year, he lied and told me
he’d been awake the whole time. I wouldn’t have lied to him.

Patrick slowed down,
but didn’t stop, so neither did I. He didn’t unroll the window until I couldn’t
pretend my shoes weren’t hurting my feet which every step.

“Get in the car, Cy,” Patrick said.

He drove on another
couple feet and stopped, so I still had to limp to get in. He didn’t even wait
for me to do up my seatbelt before he pulled the sports car into a U-turn. I’d
been on a single lane highway, but the tiny car had no problem completing the
circle on the road with its tiny wheel base.

The silence was worse
than the million questions he had every right to ask me. He didn’t ask. I
wanted to crack a window to let some of the tension out, but it wouldn’t
actually affect the air pressure.

“I’m not dropping you off at the house. I have
to be in at the university in twenty minutes. There’s a C-train station there.”

My feet were killing
me. I just wanted to go home, and I’d bought the fucking car. I put my head
against the back of the seat. “I’ll get a cab.”

Patrick exhaled,
sharply. I hadn’t meant anything at all by wanting to hire a car to take me
home.

“What wrong?”

“You promised me you were going to be in a supervisory position.
In what role is the supervisor supposed to be involved in a standard apocalypse
prevention attempt? You have minions. They should have singed eyebrows right
now, not you.”

I reached up to touch
my face. Mud flaked off. I would get the car detailed, but Ididn’t really have the time, which meant
Patrick would have to get it done for me, which meant he was cleaning up after
my mess again. We’d just had that talk. So that meant he’d do it for me. I
wondered if it had occurred to him not to answer the phone when I called. “It
was just supposed to be a dry run. He just recited his incantations better than
most. As far as we knew—"

“Do not sit there and tell me that you have a
clue as to what your boss knows. It’s far more like Ms. Gwen to know it was supposed
to be tonight all along than it is that this was all just a misunderstanding.”

Patrick swung into a
fast-food restaurant parking lot. “You normally call your demon when you get
into shit and you don’t want me to know about it. Was he not picking up?”

I flushed. August was
my sex demon. He’d been given to me at the end of a successful job back when
Patrick and I had two separate addresses. It had been after the house fire so
technically I had an address, but no place to live.

Patrick had bright
red hair. When I met him, his arms and legs had been too long for his body in a
way that I found adorable. He moved with coils of energy. In the past five
years he’d left his early twenties behind and he finished filling out all the
way. Now everything looked in perfect proportion.

“I got you coffee,” Patrick said, motioning to
the white coffee container in the two-cup holder. It hadn’t been sipped from
either.” Alarm bells went off. “What, do you think I poisoned it?”

“No,” I said truthfully. But he would have had to do
something to it, or he would have sipped on it on the way out of the city.
Patrick hated mornings.He grabbed it
and took a big swallow. “Happy?”

Friday, January 3, 2014

Greg will be touring February 3 - March 28. Please fill out the form below if you would like to host this author. Thank you!

As 1958 nears an end San Francisco
is being terrorized by a man who calls himself the “Fog City Strangler,” who
preys on pretty young blonde women.The
strangler announces each murder by sending a note and piece of cloth from the
victim’s dresses to the local newspapers.

Private eye Sam Slater is worried that the Fog City Strangler may
be eyeing his beautiful blonde wife, stewardess Amelia Ryan. Sam’s angst mounts
as the strangler continues to claim more victims. His anxiety is further fueled
when TWA launches an advertising campaign with Amelia’s picture on a series of
billboards plastered all over the city. Sam fears the billboards may attract
too much attention--the wrong kind of attention.

Meanwhile, Sam and Amelia are hired to try to find the missing
daughter of a wealthy dowager who fears she has lost her only child. The
missing woman went for a walk with her dog on Stinson Beach, near San
Francisco, and seemingly vanished into thin air. The woman’s husband arrived at
their beach house and found the dog running loose but there was no trace of his
wife. The police are stumped in their investigation.

As Sam and Amelia look into the disappearance of the woman on the
beach they discover that nothing is as it seems at first glance. On a stormy
night a shadowy figure sets fire to the beach house where the couple is
staying--hoping to stop their investigation.

Fog City Strangler is a stand-alone thriller but is part
of the Sam Slater Mystery Series--Last of the Seals, Deadly Plunge and San
Francisco Secrets.

Embark on a one-of-a-kind, unprecedented, breathtaking adventure with
Maya and Filippo as they travel around the globe on board the “Fun
Princess” — a cruise ship full of surprises. Discover their fascinating
ports of call, find out what the local customs and traditions are, join
the kids in activities at sea, and explore the remarkable world they
create through the power of their positive outlook.

This time Maya and Filippo discover Auckland and meet different kinds
of people depending on…read the book to find out! Spoiler alert: the
kids ride a big hop-on, hop-off explorer bus, where strange things
happen. They stop at the famous Sky Tower, where they do something very
exciting.

Discuss this book in our PUYB Virtual Book Club at Goodreads by clicking HERE.

The value of any new
venture or sound new idea needs to be developed out of the nothingness of
silence, ignorance and darkness. It ignites and illuminates the world only when
the great storytelling entrepreneur lights the flame. “STORYTELLING:The
Indispensable Art of the Entrepreneur” shows, with startling clarity and
practical know-how, the process by which wealth and other things of exceptional
value can emerge into the world literally
out of nothing—nothing, that is, but the Art of Storytelling.

STORYTELLING takes you on a journey which reveals how the development, progressive
modification and adaptation of your story is the golden thread and foundational
core management practice which ties together all the others:building, focusing and motivating your
management team, navigating through troubled times or excessive growth,
maintaining positive momentum with investors and Boards of Directors and
positioning the venture for a potential exit.

Award-winning author and
entrepreneur, Rudy Mazzocchi, exposes his greatest secret of success and
provides an enormous amount of “experienced-based” illustrations and
nuts-and-bolts practical advice. He reveals how to create and evolve the story
of your new venture in a way that energizes and breathes life into what may
have started out as just an idea.

Everyone can benefit
greatly from reading this book—whether or not you envision yourself as an
entrepreneur. STORYTELLING:The Indispensable Art of the Entrepreneur
applies universally to ventures of all types and is an essential element in the
fulfillment of any dream—dreams which depend upon capturing the interest and
sustaining the highly-motivated commitment of others.

Discuss this book in our PUYB Virtual Book Club at Goodreads by clicking HERE.